types of depressions their symptoms and their diagnosis

Types of depressions their symptoms and their diagnosis

Introduction

A depressive dis is something which is not a passing mood swing It is marked by combination of symptoms such as physical and psychological . Persons facing social and economic disadvantage , are at greater risk for depressive diss . Depression is more common in women . It has been demonstrated in both high and low income countries that the association of social determinants , such poverty and gender disadvantages as the major contributor to the risk for depression (Patel and Kleinman , 2003

Types of depression

( Macpherson and Amstrong , 2006 ) have reviewing literatures from Medline , which electronically indexes articles from 1966 onwards , and used these as the main source of data on the use of psychiatric diagnostic terms for depression . Data gathered on depression identified at sub-type level and these sub-types were clustered into categories which help to understand the sub-type implicitly

Table 1 Sub-type labels and clusters

Cluster Label

Causal Endogenous depression (relating to the aetiology of depression ) Exogenous depression

Reactive depression

Temporal Postnatal depression (relating to the timing or duration of illness ) Recurrent depression

Chronic depression

Acute depression

Dysthymia

Severity of symptoms Major depression (relating to the severity of depression ) Minor depression

Mild depression

Severe depression

Nature of symptoms Atypical depression (relating to the nature of symptoms ) Melancholic depression

Psychotic depression

Neurotic depression

Melancholia

Treatment response Treatment resistant depression (relating to the patient 's response to treatment ) Refractory depression

Source : Macpherson and Amstrong , 2006

Diagnosis

Among the factors making recognition of severe depression problematic for clinicians are the heterogeneous nature of the condition , lack of standardized definitions , and concomitant co-morbidities that confound differential diagnosis of symptoms . The spectrum of severity in depressive diss is extraordinarily broad , and severity assessment is comprised of several metrics including symptom intensity , diagnostic subtypes , suicide risk , and hospitalization status (Kienky Rosenbaum 2000 . Diagnosis can be achieved through consideration of symptom types and severities together with the degree of functional impairment as assessed by the psychiatric interview . It is likely that no single fundamental neurobiological defect underlies severe depression . The chronic nature and heterogeneity of this dis lead to frequent clinic visits and a longer course of treatment . Therefore , successful approaches may require an arsenal of treatments with numerous mechanisms of action (Nemeroff , 2006

Medicine

In case of episodic depression like the bipolar depression anti-depressant are used both in the short term and long term treatment However , prolonged use of anti-depressant has shown to result in manic induction , cycle acceleration , and chronic irritability (Mallakh Karippot , 2006 . Because severe depression is a chronic and heterogeneous disease , and afflicted individuals are less likely to remit spontaneously , a battery of treatments with different mechanisms of action may be required to ensure successful treatment . The pharmacological treatment strategies currently available include TCAs (tricyclic anti-depressant , SSRIs (selective seratonine reuptake inhibitors , serotonin-noradrenergic reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs , and other atypical antidepressant drugs such as monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs , and combination antidepressant /antipsychotic drug therapy , as well as antidepressants combined with a variety of augmentation agents such as thyroid...